I believe that preparing for your mentoring conversation is as important as the actual conversation, which is why it is included in the conversation wheel.
I also know that this is an area that often gets forgotten or neglected. However, the better prepared you are for your meetings and the more time you spend preparing for them, the more value you will get out of each conversation.
The saying “The more you put in, the more you get out” applies here.
You may be wondering what you need to prepare and how to prepare for your meeting.
If you are a mentor, you may wonder why you need to prepare at all. I’m going to take you through both sides so that you can understand how each needs to prepare for the meeting to get the most out of it.
- Reflecting
It’s important for you to spend time reflecting before your meeting. So, I’m going to ask you this question to think about now: “Where do you have your best ideas and thoughts?” By that I mean your most creative, innovative thinking, on your own.
Where do you go or what are you doing? Do this now . . . take a minute to pause, close your eyes and ask yourself that question right now. If you are thinking that your best ideas are when you are showering, walking, exercising, in nature, falling asleep, driving, or something similar . . . then you are in good company.
What I look out for is if anyone says they have their best creative thoughts at work.
In my experience, almost no one has their most creative thoughts when they are at work or behind their desk.
Why, then, do we think we or our staff can do their best and most creative thinking when they are driving their desk?
If you are going to a strategy meeting, brain-storming session, or creative hub meeting, then go to the place where you do your best thinking first. Spend time there reflecting on what needs to be thought about.
Tell your staff or colleagues to do the same before the meeting. The same goes for a mentoring meeting.
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Before your meeting, spend time in that place or doing what helps you think best. You will be able to bring more innovative thinking to your next mentoring meeting.
You may be wondering why you get your best thoughts in these places. It’s usually when you’re doing something repetitive, such as walking, running, swimming, driving, or showering – something that you do not have to think about doing. It’s automatic.
When you are partially occupied doing these things, you allow your brain to start thinking about other things. You are not focusing on the issue, but allowing ideas to wash through, which can start to lead to innovative thinking.
For your best ideas to come through, you usually need to be in a positive frame of mind as well. This usually means that you have more serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin in your body, which allows your prefrontal cortex, your executive brain, to be able to do its thinking.
When you are needing to prepare for your meetings, go to the place where you do your best thinking. Let your issues wash over you without dwelling on any particular one. You may just have some great insights.
- Pressing issues
All of us have issues that are unresolved and that we store in our head at any one time.
The concept of significant unresolved issues arose from David Clutterbuck’s unpublished research in the 1990s on what issues mentees brought to their mentors for discussion.
It emerged that most people in professional and managerial roles, who were mature, stable in personality, and mentally healthy, could cope with between 25 and 35 significant unresolved issues before they noticed a severe impact on their ability to cope.
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With all these issues swirling around in your head, you may be wondering which issue to bring to a mentoring session, if any. When you go to your reflective space, let these issues wash over you and see if you latch onto any one of them. Is this an issue that your mentor will be able to help you with?
- Mentee prep
How should I prepare for my meetings? As a mentee, you should spend at least 30 minutes, preferably more, preparing for your mentoring meetings.
Ensure you are fully prepared so that you get the most out of your mentoring meeting. Do some reflective thinking, going to the place where you do your best creative thinking.
Make some notes on the following 4 points:
1. Action plan: Go through the action points you compiled from your last meeting and make notes on your progress on each action point.
- Are there any issues that have come up from the action plan?
- Did anything hold me back from completing my action plan?
- Do I want to carry any of the action-plan items forward to the next meeting?
2. Journal: If you have kept a journal, go through your journal, reflecting on what has happened in your life/career/business since your last meeting.
3. Goals: Look at the goals and milestones that you wrote down from your initial meeting and reflect where you are now in terms of those milestones and goals.
4 Notes: Make some notes using the following questions to help you with your agenda:
- What has happened in the weeks since our previous meeting?
- What has been challenging for me since we last met?
- What do I want to bring to the next meeting?
- What issues or challenges am I facing right now?
- How can my mentor help me with any of these issues or challenges?
- What do I want to work on to move closer to my milestones and my goals?
- What would I like to learn from my mentor?
- What questions do I want to ask my mentor?
You are now ready to put together an agenda for what you would like to discuss in your next mentoring session. Send a calendar invitation to your mentor and an agenda or a list of discussion points at least a few days before your meetings.
Agenda for monthly/regular mentoring meetings I believe in sending an agenda or discussion points to your mentor as this really helps them know how to feel better prepared for the meeting.
It allows them time to find any articles they would like to share with you, or material they would like to give you, before the meeting.
When I was a mentee, my mentor would have to remind me a week before to send through an agenda.
I was not very good at preparing for my meetings, but realised only afterwards, when I had mentees myself, that an agenda really does help.
It also should not be the responsibility of the mentor to remind their mentee to send the agenda. I feel bad that my mentor had to constantly remind me!
This is an edited extract from The Mentoring Roadmap. The ultimate guide for mentors and mentees by Catherine Hodgson (published by Shift Mentoring). Available in all good bookstores. The recommended retail price is R450.
